Abstract
Energy demand is increasingly the most relevant cost item in chemical plants. Operating expenses indeed play a main role in all plants processing large amounts of feedstock via well-established processes in the petrochemical industry. In staged operations, the optimal number of stages is usually obtained by means of an economic optimization. However, the designed equipment, external duties, and thus operating expenses may considerably vary under the effect of external disturbances. The main purpose of this paper is to outline a simple but effective procedure to account for perturbations in the assessment of the optimal number of stages. The analysis shows that appropriate investments could lead to a unit design able to mitigate the higher duty requirements when external perturbations occur. The results highlight that the optimal number of stages varies when uncertainty is considered and, with low computational effort, this can be effectively quantified by means of the applied methodology. Furthermore, the same approach has been applied to sustainability indicators over the uncertain domain as well. In those cases, when more stages correspond to more flexible equipment, the environmental impact is positively affected, and a double benefit can be observed.